Meddling about with the OS X system

So obviously everyone knows that the Mac OS X Lion dev preview was released, swarmed, feed to the torrent hoard, and now everyone is tinkering with it. Most seem to have commented ‘meh’
It’s an early preview, So it’s likely very far from finished. I must say that this initial release already has more obvious ‘fundamental’ changes to look forward to. I recall being far less amused when I had checked our all the old Snow Leo betas.

I am looking for more intel on the new OS X. Not much out there yet. Though people mass-installing beta software in a frenzy of hype seems like a security nightmare. I observed some torrent files that were released “In order to be used by non-developers” Which could mean simply editing plist files, Or could be something more nefarious like the inclusion of malware or rootkits.
So far, I haven’t heard much, But I did find these updates on some of the bugs:

Posted by RoryPiper 9 hours ago

Heads up. These are the known bugs and stuff:

Known Issues
– If after enabling Disk Encryption you are rebooted back into Lion, and the Disk Encryption tab of the Security & Privacy System Preferences pane does not report that your disk is in the process of encrypting, please try re-enabling disk encryption.

– The Services menu may not be fully functional in applications utilizing Application Sandboxing, such as TextEdit and Preview.

– Application Sandboxing does not currently track renames while a document is open. If one opens a file in an application utilizing Application Sandboxing and renames the file in Finder while it is open, further attempts to save the file from the application will then fail until it is restarted.

– iPhoto pictures cannot be viewed in Full Screen on MacBooks with discrete video hardware.

– VoiceOver will not play a welcome message during initial user setup. VoiceOver works correctly otherwise, once enabled through System Preferences or by hitting‚ command-F5.

– If AirDrop does not appear to be working correctly, option-click the AirPort menubar item and ensure that the channel listed is not on the 5 GHz band with a channel between 52-64 or 100-140. Disabling and enabling Wi-Fi may resolve this issue.

– The Recovery partition may not be created when installing Lion on a drive with an unsupported partition scheme.

– In the open and save dialogs of Preview and TextEdit, the controls that allow you to specify formats, encodings, and other options may not be visible if the Dock is positioned on the right or left edges of the screen. If you encounter this issue, you can get around it by dismissing the panel, moving the Dock to the bottom of the screen, and bringing up the panel again.

– Multitouch trackpads that only support two-finger gestures will not have an option to reverse the scrolling direction in the Trackpad System Preferences pane.

– If your computer is unable to connect to your ethernet network, check to see that the Ethernet interface is listed on the left side of the Network System Preferences pane. If not, click the “+” button and add the Ethernet interface.

– If you are enabling MobileMe synchronization for the first time after installing Lion, go to the MobileMe System Preferences pane, select the Sync tab, and enable “Synchronize with MobileMe”. Next, deselect all synchronization options from Bookmarks to Preferences. Finally, reboot your machine and go back to the MobileMe System Preferences pane to re-enable all desired synchronization options.

– iTunes gift cards and other redemption codes cannot be redeemed in the Mac App Store.

– Saving a PDF being previewed in Safari is not currently supported. Instead, ctrl-click the link to the PDF and select “Save Linked File”.

Looking to catch up on some new topics and projects. Having recently went through the whole process of re-configuring, jailbreaking, and customizing a used iphone 3Gs, I have also ended up discussing and researching smartphone security. I am starting a new post on that subject now. Be back soon with a post.

So I never really dove into the newest OS X Snow Leopard until recently. I had my older Macbook Pro so dialed with OS X Server 10.5.4, I never cared to lose all my modifications. So recently I bought a used MBP with slightly better specs than my old one. With that, I installed Snow Leopard Server 10.6.5

So I’ve already began modifying the GUI a bit, But the OS X GUI theming community has not yet PWNED the GUI to the extent that they had with Leopard. Overall, the UI is already a bit more aesthetically pleasing stock than it’s predecessor. This is all probably 2-year old to anyone active in the Mac Theming community, But l like I said, I sat this one out. And I intend to use this blog as an archive of this type of info regardless of the fact that I don’t really have traffic here. So meh.

And one more thing, I’ll be continuing researching new developments with theming SL until OS X “Lion” comes out. For anyone reading who is interested in modifying the Mac user interface, Proceed to MacThemes

Not many new adventures in GUI hacking. Mostly just melee’s with IOS4 + 3G configurations.
Here’s my UI finally back to how i like it.

Same Ole’ Desktop UI

Also I’ve been continuing brand-consistency work with the promotional design for BIOTAXI LLC.

Eugene, Oregon’s First Bio-Fueled Taxi Company.
“Blue Cars, Blue Skies” is the company’s statement.
With a sustainable business model, This is great step
forward in lowering emissions, and re-using local food-waste.

And just for random sharing. Figured i ‘d post a scribble i did while trouble shooting a GRUB problem. did this while waiting for a 30 min disc check.

Greetings. sigh. So it’s obvious i hardly have the time i want to keep this page updated.
I promise to try more. I spend more time dealing with problems i cause through fiddling with my computers, so that leaves little time for writing about them.

Anyway, so Snow Leopard is out now, and everyone is constantly talking about it. Nothing major happened yet as far as the themer community goes. I expect when 10.6.1 comes out, most of the theme haX0rs will have ironed out a lot of kinks with themeing Snow Leopard. Then I’ll do a post on specific techniques to theme SL.

thanks to Toutheme of the Macthemes community. There is already
a theme available to mod Snow Leopard.

I havent got a copy yet, mostly because i use OS X Server, and and i dont see purchasing an upgrade for quite some time. But I beta-tested a random build of SL a while back to see how 3rd-party apps and typical themeing methods would work, and it was glitchy as all hell. But that’s to be expected, and to be honest, I still noticed some cool perks of SL. Very low CPU usage throughout a myriad of tasks. snappier opening and closing of apps and files, etc. No doubt it will be an efficient upgrade.

Here’s some tidbits that have been surfacing so far:

As far as UI-hacking:

– There has been an update to Candybar that should make it work with SL.
– Keeping CoreUI enabled in SL will insure better system performance.
– Preview ( the native OS X image-viewing app) can now save files to ICNS format.

As far as general News:

– Apple has a list of incompatible apps Here
– Snowleopard has an invisible process that scans for malware. Crunchgear states that it isnt that thorough, but meh. At least it may help macs stay out of botnets.
– Apparently, SL does NOT have full support for Sun’s ZFS filesystem.”Sun’s licensing demands killed the deal”
this sucks. i was looking forward to this filesystem as an option.

Have you have been interested in customizing your mac, yet you are hesitant to dig around through the private-frameworks files in your OS X install? Hesitate no longer.

For quite some time now, The Mac-Themes community has anticipated the arrival of ‘FACADE‘
An application to be used in conjunction with another app called ‘ARCHITECT‘ (which has been released as a beta for a while now) Which if used together, can result in a full-solution for customizing the OS X user-interface.

I recently found out that ‘MAGNIFIQUE‘ had been released, which is a free piece of software via Pcwiz, and the Magnifique Team.

Part of the appeal of modifying the UI for me, is the hands-on approach, Creating icons, figuring shit out, etc. I enjoy that part of the process.
But still, I jumped to explore this new application. Within most of the themes available for download, there existed some new modification to the interface that i had not been able to find or alter yet. It’s as simple to use as any other app. Just load the themes, and go. The application also leaves room for adjustments and personalization.
The user is given the option to “merge” themes, or port in their own. It’s great. But for free, it’s greater.

I am still looking forward to see what Facade comes up with. Architect alone seems great for designing a theme yourself. However it leaves the installation of the theme to Facade. So we’ll see how that all pans out when it is released.

There have been many hands-on techniques for quite some time now, And even other full-solution apps back in the Tiger-PPC days. ( such as ‘Shapeshifter’ by Unsanity Software ) Most of these techniques originated out of the Macthemes website, as well as the InsanelyMac forums, and can still be found there in the forums and wikis therein. Following is a brief description of the most typical procedures for customizing your Mac

1.) Mod the menubar, Change the Apple Icon.

First, download ArtTools. It is a simple java-decoding app that you run through terminal. It will also re-encode the art files into a new resource-file after you alter and / or replace the images in the art files.

Next, Go to this pathway:

System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/CoreUIFramework/Versions/A/Resources

The file we are concerned with here is SArtFile.bin
This file, along with Extras2.rsrc ( which i will get to shortly ) are the keys to modifying
the menubar, apple icon, and various aspects of the UI such as Finder window colors.

So backup SArtFile.bin, and copy it to the desktop. Then, place it in the ‘artTools’ folder along with the java files which are in the folder by default.

pen a Terminal, cd to the directory where the jars and SArtFile.bin are.type: java -jar artDecoder.jar SArtFile.bin artfiles/

all the files wille be unpacked to the artfiles folder. Edit them as you wish.

Once done navigate back to the folder in Terminal where the jars and SArtFile.bin are.
type: java -jar artfiles/ SArtFile.bin SArtFile.new.bin

check the size of SArtFile.new.bin (should be around 1.5 – 2.5 MB).

rename SArtFile.new.bin to SArtFile.bin (you might have to delete the original SArtFile.bin in the folder to do this).

Replace the current SArtFile.bin with it in /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/CoreUI.framework/Resources/

Logout.

Done!

NOTE: IF SArtFIle.bin is very small like around a few hundred Kilobytes or you get an exception running the jars, you did something wrong.

Now, perhaps you just changed the menubar to a darker color. The menu-type in the menubar is likely still black. In order to change this, you will need to go and downloadThemepark.

Once you get Themepark going, You will want to go to Open > Special > Extras2.rsrc
This will start a new Extras2.rsrc file that you can replace your current one with.
the file’s native path in your system is here:

So once you’ve got your new Extras2.rsrc opened up in Themepark, you’ll want to navigate to clr# / 384

here is the window you should be looking at:

from there, you’ll want to count to the 30th, and 31st squares. ( counting the first square as zero ) Change the colors of those two squares to lighter colors, and save the file. Then backup your system’s default Extras2.rsrc file, and replace it with the new one. You should logout, and the text should be the new color you selected.

So i have started to actually “blog” on my blog now. Not much traffic coming through anyway. So whatevhs. So lately i have been messing around with Arch Linux, and Gentoo Linux.
All these sessions have got me thinking. All the configuring, testing, failing, retrying, re-editing config files in VIM, really gets me thinking about OS X + Linux a lot more. There are many parallels, and i love the idea of combining the things i like about all of them into one, open-source operating system.

For example, my everyday host-OS is the latest updated OS X leopard. One thing i dislike about the way OS X updates it’s software packages is that there are a bunch of applications i dont use, that software update always has updates for. All the time. I dont use iLife, iMove, iDVD, Pages, Keynote, iPhoto, etc. So why would i want to constantly install updates for apps i dont use? they can take up plenty of MB’s of space, that could be better utilized for a variety of different usages. This is why i prefer the Linux way of package-management.
Need to update an application you use everyday? Pop right into the terminal, and type
‘sudo apt-get udpate’, or ’emege –sync’, or ‘pacman -Syu’ depending on your system, and you can update packages manually, and Only update the ones you need.

Sure, you can always opt to just check off the updates you dont want in Software Update,
but Software Update doesnt additionally provide you with a multitude of other additional packages you might not need, but you may want.
This is why you may want to consider installing Fink, and /or Gentoo OS X. (portage)

Portage
An effort to bring Gentoo Portage to Apple Mac OS X. The goal of this project is to enable OS X users to enjoy the application richness of Portage on their favourite operating system of choice.

In its current incarnation, the project has its limitations on OS X which make the project for OS X as such incomplete. Embraced by the Gentoo/Alt project these limitations are recognised and being worked on with the purpose of finding a satisfying solution in the long run.

However, the download link for the install files seems to be down currently. I’ll re-post
when i see that it is up.

Fink
The Fink project wants to bring the full world of Unix Open Source software to Darwin and Mac OS X. We modify Unix software so that it compiles and runs on Mac OS X (“port” it) and make it available for download as a coherent distribution. Fink uses Debian tools like dpkg and apt-get to provide powerful binary package management. You can choose whether you want to download precompiled binary packages or build everything from source.

Macports
The MacPorts Project is an open-source community initiative to design an easy-to-use system for compiling, installing,
and upgrading either command-line, X11 or Aqua based open-source software on the
Mac OS X operating system. To that end we provide the command-line driven MacPorts software package under a BSD License, and through it easy access to thousands of ports
that greatly simplify the task of compiling and installing open-source software on your Mac.